Capitol Steps

The Capitol Steps began as a group of Senate staffers who set out to satirize the very people and places that employed them.  In the years that followed, many of the Steps ignored the conventional wisdom ("Don't quit your day job!"), and although not all of the current members of the Steps are former Capitol Hill staffers, taken together the performers have worked in a total of eighteen Congressional offices and represent 62 years of collective House and Senate staff experience. Since they began, the Capitol Steps have recorded 27 albums, including their latest, Springtime for Liberals . They've been featured on NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS, and can be heard 4 times a year on National Public Radio stations nationwide during their Politics Takes a Holiday radio specials.

Mike Luckovich was born January 28, 1960, and began his career in 1984 at the Greenville News and the New Orleans Times-Picayune before finding his home at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1989.  He has been syndicated in 150 newspapers (which makes him the most reprinted cartoonist nationally) and appears frequently on CNN. His cartoons appear in two book-lengh collections--Lots of Luckovich and Four More Wars!  Among his many successes, he is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and the recipient of the 2006 Rueben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year (awarded by the National Cartoonists Society).

Alan Ainsworth is a poet, short story writer and critic whose prose and poetry have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The American Book Review, The New England Review, Western Humanities Review and ArtLies, among others. His poetry has been anthologized in TimeSlice: Houston Poetry 2005 and most recently in The Weight of Addition, An Anthology of Texas Poetry. For two years, he served as poetry editor of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts and since 1998, has chaired the English Department at Houston Community College, Central Campus. His anthology 75 Arguments Plus is forthcoming from McGraw-Hill. Ainsworth received his BA from Rice University and his MA and PhD from the University of Houston.

Washington, DC media and political veteran Patrick B. Haggerty will preview the 2008  Presidential campaign by combining his humor and 30 years as a Washington DC insider so TCC students, faculty, staff and guests can better understand the presidential primaries. 

Haggerty's background includes 25 years covering Congress, the White House and the federal agencies as a journalist, Press Secretary to two Members of Congress, advisor to four Presidential campaigns (he's  batting .500) Advanceman for a successful U.S. Senate campaign, political news consultant to ABC TV's Good Morning America and frequent guest on the Larry King Show.

Haggerty is a popular speaker around the country and speech coach. His experience as a speech coach is how he was selected to be in the Borat movie as Borat's speech/humor coach. His segment trying to teach Borat the "Not" joke has earned him a spot in pop culture and he is often greeted in public places by people who quote the "Not" joke segment to him.

Tom Robotham